Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on April 4, 2007
Rheumatology 2007 46(6):1035-1036; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/kem064
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
Use of the QuantiFERON TB Gold test as part of a screening programme in patients with RA under consideration for treatment with anti-TNF-
agents: the Newcastle (UK) experience
1Musculoskeletal Research Group, Institute of Cellular Medicine, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE2 4HH and 2Musculoskeletal Unit, Freeman Hospital, High Heaton, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE7 7DN, UK
Correspondence to: Arthur Pratt, Floor 4, Catherine Cookson Building, The Medical School, Framlington Place, Newcastle-upon-Tyne NE2 4HH, UK. E-mail: arthur.pratt@ncl.ac.uk
| The first 10% of the full text of this article appears below. |
SIR, RA patients treated with anti-TNF-
agents have an increased risk of developing Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) infection, the magnitude of which (compared with background risk) depends on the agent used, approaching 10-fold for infliximab-treated patients [1]. Such cases are likely predominately to represent reactivation of latent infection, as opposed to the de novo cases, which are thought to account for most etanercept-associated infections [2]. For the purposes of latent MTB infection screening the tuberculin skin test (TST) has well-recognized shortcomings [3], and
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